The Cold Commands

CHAPTER 30

They paid off the boatman at Prophet’s Landing. Puddles of bandlight on the river’s skin, and the drip-dribble of water from the shipped oars. The clink and dull gleam of coins counted out into a callused palm. Payment stowed, the boatman shoved off immediately and without a word—he was still sulking by the look of it. They watched the darkness on the river swallow him up, then went carefully up the green-grown slimy stone steps of the landing. At the top, the merchant quarter brooded in deserted early-hours gloom—shut-up shops and warehouses, auction halls and stabling, the odd glimmer of a watchman’s lantern here and there, but otherwise no sign of life. They slipped into the warren of darkened streets and away.

There had been no pursuit.

None you saw, anyway.

Egar said nothing to the others, but still, he could feel the vague snake of worry turn over in his guts. A year ago at Ennishmin, they’d run from the dwenda and he’d seen the pursuing scouts glimmer into ghostly blue-lit life on the banks of the river, watching him in silence as he passed. He spent most of the journey downstream from Afa’marag looking out for the same thing, but he saw no recognizable sign. Whether that meant they were in the clear, he had no idea.

He caught himself wishing Ringil were there. He missed the faggot’s sour, selfish introspection and book-learned wit.

Gil would have known what to make of all this.

He shook it off. Come on, Dragonbane. Bad enough you let Imrana do most of your thinking for you these days. Now you need a fucking faggot at the task?

Be asking him to fucking tug you off next.

He made the effort. If Pashla Menkarak was treating with dwenda under the impression he was in holy communion with angels, Egar was almost tempted to let the whole thing run its natural course. He’d pay hard coin to see Menkarak’s face when the angels shrugged off whatever glamour they’d cast and stepped forward for what they were. Maybe they’d stalk the corridors of the Citadel and tear every fucking invigilator within its walls limb from limb. Maybe they’d put every priestly head on a tree stump still living, the way they’d done with the victims at Ennishmin.

(Still gave him the odd nightmare—what he’d seen done in that swamp.)

Be hard to feel bad about an outcome like that, though. Certainly, it’d get the Citadel off Archeth’s back.

They found a tavern still open, weak gutter of candles melted down in their own wax along the trestle tables, clientele down to a few drowsy drunks and a couple of whores counting up the night’s takings with their pimp in a corner. Harath went to get mugs of spiced wine at the bar, while Egar sat at an empty table opposite the girl and gazed at her like a problem he had to solve.

Which she pretty much was.

“You’re bleeding,” she said quietly.

It was a reminder he didn’t really need. The wound in his thigh throbbed every time he took a step, but it seemed to have stopped bleeding on the ride downriver. The other stuff was superficial—furrows and scratches no worse than you’d get from a crooked whore trying to roll you. The old adage welled up in his head. Ignored gashes heal the fastest.

“Used to it,” he grunted. “What am I going to do with you, girl?”

“Anything you want.” The same low, colorless voice. “I am yours now.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Right.”

He supposed the obvious thing was to take her to Archeth’s place. But—

Harath arrived with the wine, which was by now lukewarm. They sat in silence for a while, sipping, cradling the scant heat of the mugs in their hands. Presently, a serving maid came out and put a platter of cured fish portions on the table for them. Harath dived in.

“So what you going to do with her?” he asked, as if the girl were not sitting there.

“That’s not your concern. What you do is get back to your room, pay the rent, and keep your head down. I’ll come by with the rest of your money in a couple of days.”

“Worried about those demon things, huh?”

“No.”

Harath, nodding to himself as he chewed. “Worried they’ll track us, right?”

“You fucking deaf? I said no. I said I’m not worried about them.”

The Ishlinak jerked his chin. “Yeah, doesn’t sound like it.”

Egar drew a hard breath, let it slowly out. He looked down at the backs of his hands. There was a gouge across the left one he hadn’t noticed before.

Great.

“All right, yes. This is some serious shit,” he finally admitted, to himself as much as the Ishlinak. “The Citadel are fucking about with things they don’t understand. Things I don’t understand, either. But it’s black shaman stuff. Night powers magic.”

“Oh, you reckon?” Suddenly there was a hiss in the younger man’s tone. He leaned in across the table. “Corpses—of my fucking kin, Skaranak—rising from the dead after we just fucking killed them! Faceless warriors that walk with the lightning! Night powers, you say? Are you sure?”

“Keep your voice down.”

Jabbing finger across the trestle and into his face. “You said we wouldn’t kill any—”

Egar grabbed the hand at the wrist, slammed it flat to the table. “I said keep your fucking voice down.”

He locked eye with eye, forearm tensed as the younger man tried to free his trapped hand. The struggle coiled and uncoiled, draining ache through muscles already hammered hard in the fight. He hung on. Make it look easy. Work the bluff. He tilted his head a little, inquiring. Kept the stare. Used it all to lean imperceptibly in and reinforce the downward hold. Harath heaved one more time and gave up, tried to pull away. Egar held on another couple of seconds to make sure, then gave him his hand back.

“You were paid, Majak.” Hiding among spaced and even words how badly he needed to get his breath back. “Sometimes things don’t work out the way they’re planned. Demlarashan ought to have taught you that much.”

Harath looked back sullenly. “They were my friends.”

“Yeah? Well as I recall, when I came calling on you, your best guess was that your friends had sent me to murder you. Remember that?”

“You said—”

“I know what I said. I didn’t know what we’d find in there. Now the fight is done, you’re alive, and your purse is full. Pretty good outcome for a freebooter, I’d say. So shut the fuck up and let me think.”

Silence. They sat and let him think.

Obvious thing was to take her to Archeth’s place.

Right.

But the Citadel were going to be watching Archeth’s place, now more than ever, and out of sight to boot.

Couple of days ago, could maybe have sneaked her past the old cordon they had out there with nobody the wiser. But that was before you decided to go breaking bones and faces for fun. Now they’ll have spies in beggar’s rags along the boulevard and probably men with spyglasses in upper rooms across the street. No way to tell who’s watching where anymore.

Nice going, Dragonbane.

Grimace.

Could try it anyway—wrap her head-to-foot, maybe. Not exactly unheard of around here.

But he knew the scheme was dead in the water even as he hatched it. The Citadel would be looking for any possible way there was to discredit Archeth, and Archeth’s tastes were widely whispered of. The arrival of a fresh female, however attired, would just fan the flames of gossip. It would get back to Menkarak for sure, and if the invigilator chose to do the needlepoint, stitch Majak freebooter to mysterious female to dwenda with gashes from a staff lance to the disappearance of a certain slave girl in Afa’marag…

No. Forget Archeth’s place.

There’s always—

Egar shot the younger man a surreptitious glance, saw the way he was drooling over the girl like some street dog confronted with a bowl of fresh offal. Dumped the idea before it made it all the way to a clearly formed thought. He barely trusted the Ishlinak to keep himself out of trouble the next few days, let alone keep anyone else safe at the same time. Harath, with a stuffed purse and swelling bravado from their adventures and safe escape…

At best, he’d force himself on the girl by way of payment for the favor. Maybe have her running off screaming down the street. At worst, he’d have her out on display at every mercenary watering hole in town while he told the tale for beers.

Forget it, Dragonbane. Worse idea than Archeth’s place.

He wondered for a moment about Darhan, maybe some comrade of Darhan’s from the Combined Irregulars…

You don’t want to lean too much on that tribal thing.

His old trainer’s own words, against the early-morning rattle of staff practice. And a speculative look in his eye.

You’re a fucking idiot, Dragonbane, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. You, and your loyalties. Going to get you killed one of these days.

He realized, with a slow seeping chill, that he didn’t really know Darhan anymore—perhaps had never known the man, save as a gruff elder-brother substitute when he pitched up in the city, callow and gawking, what seemed like a lifetime ago.

You’ve been gone too long, Dragonbane. He knew it for the truth—it had that solid, marrow-deep ring to it, like a clean ax blow going home. Times change, and men change with them. This isn’t the city you remember.

You are alone here.

Suddenly, trusting Darhan with the girl and her story didn’t seem like such a good idea.

WHICH LEFT JUST THE ONE OPTION, REALLY.

HE SENT HARATH HOME. SIT TIGHT, WAIT FOR WORD. HE DOUBTED THE younger man would be able to do either for more than a couple of days, but maybe that’d be enough.

“What will you do with me now?” the girl asked him, when the tavern door had swung shut on the Ishlinak.

“I’m taking you to see a friend,” he told her.

Outside, the night was starting to wear thin and gray—but dawn was still a good few hours off, and the streets were as empty as before. Egar stood for a moment, checked for unwanted witnesses in doorways or at windows. Saw none, and beckoned for the girl to come out and join him. She limped to his side, favoring her left foot. He noticed her unshod feet for the first time since they’d gotten out of the temple—legs still mud-splattered and streaked from the river. Hard to see if there was blood. Her lips pressed together as she saw him looking. Panic in her eyes once more.

“I’m fine,” she jittered. “I can walk, I’m fine.”

“What’s your name?” he asked her gently.

“They call me Nil.”

“Good enough.” He glanced up at the sky. “Well listen, Nil, we have to hurry here. I want to get you off the street before daybreak. Last stretch, just stay with me. Can you do that?”

A tight nod.

“Let’s go, then.”

Up through the gently shelving streets toward the Palace Quarter, and despite her limp, Nil was as good as her word. She kept to his pace better than some imperial levy recruits he’d been saddled with in the past. He felt the tension in him begin to ease as they climbed. The higher up the hill you got, the better the neighborhood and the less chance you’d end up in any kind of trouble. Up here, the militia patrols were frequent and well disciplined, not likely to be hitting you up for bribes or favors. Citizens and slaves went about their business with assurance. And any criminals on the prowl would be smart, would have well-planned agendas that didn’t include getting into random street squabbles.

Long and short of it—anyone they met on these immaculately maintained thoroughfares was going to have better things to do than gawk at or otherwise involve themselves with some passing Majak freebooter and his concubine.

So they hit Harbor Hill Rise without incident. Made it all the way to the mansion with the mosaic dome cupola, having seen no more than half a dozen hurrying servants and a couple of doorway-hugging war-wounded beggars who’d somehow avoided being shooed and shoved back down the hill the night before. They found the mansion’s servant entry, and Egar took a moment to square away the last of his vague misgivings.

Then he reached up and tugged at the bellpull.

The chimes chased each other away. Long delay, while voices and footfalls went back and forth behind the wall. He was half tempted to smear a couple of leaping steps up the white stone, grab the black iron spikes at the top, and vault over, wounds or no wounds. It wouldn’t have been the first time—but under the circumstances…

He waited.

Finally, a slat opened at head height in the dark wood paneling of the door. Eyes peered out.

“Yes?”

“Brinag?”

“He’s busy in the cellar. And we don’t pay anyone till end of month, so if you’re here to settle accounts, forget it. What do you want?”

Egar gave the watching eyes a grim smile. “What I want is for you to tell Brinag that Egar the Dragonbane is outside, and he’d better get this door open before I kick it in for you.”

Shocked silence. A pair of heartbeats.

“Uhm—yes, my lord. Yes, I’ll… There is, my lord, the main gate. If you had only—”

“Just go and get him.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The slave hurried off, forgot to close the slat before he went. Egar glanced at Nil, who was sagging at his side.

“Not long now,” he murmured.

Brinag came bustling up, checked Egar through the slat, and unbolted the door. He ushered them inside, cupping a candle aside with one hand. Checked the street and closed the door, leaned his back against it. Cleared his throat with mannered eunuch delicacy.

“My lord, this is really not an ideal time to be calling. As you’re no doubt aware—”

“Is he in, though?”

“No, my lord.”

“And she is?”

Brinag sighed. “Yes, my lord.”

“What I thought. You’d better take me to her, then.”

“Very well.” The eunuch cast a cold eye over Nil. “And this is?”

“A gift,” Egar told him succinctly. “Brin, we’re wasting time.”

In the glow from the candle, the look on the eunuch’s face said he thought that was the least of their problems. But he made no further comment. He led them through the ornamental herb garden and up the decorative iron spiral staircase into the kitchens. Through the high-ceilinged spaces within, up more stairs and along the tastefully tapes-tried and carpeted corridors of the upper levels, toward the seaward wing of the house. Brinag nodding curtly at slaves and servants along the way, trading at one point his candle for a lantern.

“If this visit comes to light,” he muttered, “then—”

“Then I got in over the wall somehow. Just another Majak harem marauder, and you don’t know anything about it. Same as it ever was. Can you trust these people?”

“I can trust them not to want whipping within an inch of their lives,” Brinag said sourly. “I suppose that will have to do.”

He led them to the chief bedchamber. No surprises there, Imrana wasn’t an early riser at the best of times, and dawn was still a way off. Back in the tavern, Egar would have put his whole purse on her being right here in this room. He wouldn’t have bet quite as much on Knight Commander Saril Ashant’s whereabouts, but he knew enough of the relationship to spit and hope for marital absence. It wasn’t exactly the worst risk he’d ever taken.

Brinag knocked apologetically at the chamber doors, held up a hand for quiet, waited, knocked again. Waited. Knocked louder.

A muffled, moaning volley of curses from within the chamber. The eunuch tipped a bleak glance at Egar. He eased one door open a crack and slipped through the gap. Twisted about, held up a forbidding finger.

“Wait here.”

The door closed with a tight snap, leaving them in the gloom. Murmur of voices beyond, first Brin’s and then the sleepy-toned responses, growing louder and less sleepy by the word. Egar grimaced. Then conversation stopped, caught up on some jag of angry disbelief. Long quiet, then another murmur. Brin’s footfalls back to the door. The door opened and the eunuch slipped back out. He surveyed the two of them, deadpan.

“The Lady Imrana will see you now,” he said. “Please go through.”

She was off the bed and tucking herself tight in a linen robe as they walked in. The Lady Imrana Nemaldath Amdarian, long black hair in comely disarray, the face it framed hard-boned and harsh, even in the kindly light of the lamps Brinag had lit for her before he came out. It took the softening effect of all the cosmetics she would later layer on to ease the command in that face, to make it into something more appropriately womanly, something more appropriate, Egar always thought, to how she was below the neck. Imrana was voluptuous by Yhelteth standards, despite the advancing years, breasts full and heavy in the tight-wrapped folds of the robe, tilt and curve of generous hips as she stalked barefoot across the tiles toward him. And with the anger marked on her face like that, scarlet spots burning at each cheekbone, man, he could feel a want for her coming on stronger than—

“Are you fucking deranged, Egar?” The obscenity, there in her mannered mouth like a plum. As ever, it made him hard just hearing that urbane, throaty courtier voice rolling out language fit for a Skaranak milkmaid. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Coming here like this?”

“Imrana, listen—”

“I said a fortnight! Is that so hard to get through your thick Majak skull? He’s still here, he’s still on fucking furlough!”

“Not in this bed, though.” Egar, stung by the epithet Majak. She’d never used it on him before outside of pillow play. “Didn’t take him long to burn through his marital obligations and take his business elsewhere, did it? Which brothel do you reckon it was this time?”

It stopped her like a slap. She breathed in, hard enough that he saw her fine aristo nostrils pinch with it. She retucked herself a little tighter in her robe, as if the temperature in the room had suddenly fallen. Her voice grew cold and calm.

“I have no idea, Egar. No idea at all. In truth, it’s more likely he’s with one of his mistresses. He will have had his fill of brothel flesh while he was on campaign.” Small, bleak smile for him. “So. Is speaking it aloud supposed to shock either of us?”

“I wouldn’t have come here if I had another choice.”

Imrana glanced at the girl. “Really? In this whole city, you really can’t find anywhere else to play three in a bed.”

“It’s not—”

“What about your beautiful black-skinned sponsor? I hear she likes it that way, couldn’t you persuade her to—”

“Will you shut up, woman! I didn’t come here to fuck you!”

The echoes chased briefly around the chamber, lost themselves in the heavy black drapes and expensive wall hangings. Imrana stared at him. In the breathing space that followed, he discovered that what really stung was her apparent opinion, laid abruptly bare with this unscripted meeting. It lurched through the arrangement of his memories like a drunken thug in a spice market, scattering and trampling the little rows of jars and pots, the artfully opened, fine-odored sacks. Belch and curse and stagger, smash and spill. Everything he’d valued, turned over in his head—he watched it happen like the sack of some pretty hillside town. Thick-skull big-cock barbarian bit of rough—was that all he’d ever been? Or was it the march of years, clawing them apart? Had passing time and age done this to them both, made them colder and more distant, wound up in their own affairs and grasping scared at what was left? He cast his mind back, tried to remember. Found he couldn’t. Found he didn’t want to.

His wounds ached, suddenly. Suddenly, he felt old.

Perhaps she felt it, too. Perhaps she read the damage in his face. She went back and sat on the edge of the bed. Unconscious elegance in the lines of her legs, the spread of her arms out to the sides, pressing on the mattress, the downward tilt of her head and the way her hair swung forward to shroud her face. She took the ends of her robe tie, fiddled with them. Looked up with a new smile, one that stabbed him through the chest.

“But you nearly did fuck me, Eg,” she said quietly. “Coming here like this.”

“Well, that wasn’t the plan,” he growled.

“No, perhaps not. And forgive me if I shouted, but Egar, you have to see. Saril and I have this down. I ignore his indiscretions, and he either genuinely believes I am chaste or he does not care so long as I appear so. It works, it is civilized. You…”

“I’m not civilized. Yeah, got that.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She glanced again at Nil, seemed to see the girl properly for the first time. Another smile, one he couldn’t read, flickering across her face. “She’s kind of cute, Eg, but she’s filthy. And she’s dead on her feet. Where on Earth did you get her?”

“That’s a long story.” Still the trace of the growl in his voice. “If you want to hear it.”

“Of course I want to hear it. Look, I’ll have her cleaned up, and we’ll talk. All right?”

It was almost like watching a knight putting on his plate, preparatory to battle. The sections of the Imrana he knew, strapped into place piece by piece. She got up and went to the bellpull at the head of the bed, tugged it sharply. One hand went up to her hair, stroked the dark fall back at her ear—it looked almost nervous. He saw how thin strands of gray and white twined through the dyed dark like the fine wires in some Kiriath machine. She tilted her head at him.

“You know, Eg, all those years. If you’d wanted three in a bed, you only had to ask.”

HE WASN’T SURE IF SHE BELIEVED HIM, WASN’T SURE IF HE MUDDLED through the tale clearly enough for it to make any sense to her. But with Nil taken away by Brinag for a bath, Imrana at least seemed to be listening. And he thought he read genuine anguish in her face when he showed her his wounds.

“I thought we’d done with all this, you and I,” she murmured, kneeling in front of him at the bedside, pressing gently along the sides of the gash in his thigh. She’d torn his breeches where the wound was, to see the cut more clearly. Ashant wasn’t the first knight she’d been married to, and like most Yhelteth noblewomen she was well versed in the art of caring for spouses returned from the fray. “I thought you’d come back here to retire from all this.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Though truth was, he’d never seen it in anything like those terms. “What can I tell you? Trouble grows lonely, comes looking for me again.”

She darted him a look. “I think you may have that backward.”

He grunted. Elsewhere in the mansion, through the walls, you could hear voices and the sounds of movement as the household got on its predawn feet. In here, though, it all felt very distant, the activity of other yurts around the camp when what counted was here before him in the soft glow of the lamps. The raw rift opened between them earlier seemed to have healed over, but he wasn’t sure if that didn’t unnerve him more than the revelation of the rift itself. He winced as she pressed tighter on the wound.

“This is going to need stitches,” she said. “I’ll do it myself, if you’d like that.”

“Yeah, fine. Question remains, Imrana. What am I supposed to do about all this? Can you keep the girl, at least for a while?”

“Of course. Who’s going to notice, in a household this size? But you’ll need to tell all this to Archeth, you know you will. You can’t go head-to-head with the Citadel on your own.”

“I told you, I can’t go near Archeth right now.”

“Then get word to her. I can arrange that easily enough. But you can’t stay here while I do it, Egar. You know that, too, right?”

“Right,” he said glumly.

“Do you need cash? I can—”

“Got cash, that’s not the problem. Problem is, who can I and can I not trust in this fucking city?”

She shrugged. “Welcome to my world. At court, you wouldn’t—”

Shouting from the corridor. The sounds of struggle.

Their eyes met for a jagged second.

“You squealing castrate piece of shit!” Hoarse bellowing, just outside the chamber. Something thumped heavily into the wall. “Cover up for her, will you, you fucking half man?”

Panic flooded Imrana’s face.

“It’s him, oh shit, it’s him! He’s back! Get out of here Eg, go, go! The window, get—”

The doors to the chamber burst inward.

Brinag came first, stumbling backward, arms wheeling for balance he could not find. He went over on his back. Scrabbled into a crouch on the carpet, face turned toward them. Egar made out the reddening weal across one cheek where he’d been struck.

“My lady, I’m so sorry. He came unannounced—”

Voice scaling to a sudden cry as Knight Commander Saril Ashant loomed up behind him and swung a well-worn campaign boot into his arse. Brinag lurched forward with the force of the kick, landed flat to the floor. Ashant stepped over his sprawled body and kicked him again, casually, in the head.

“I’ll announce myself, gelding.” Well-bred voice loud and lecturing—Egar caught the tone. The Yhelteth knight was drunk or something like it, and his blood was up. “In my own house, to my own lady wife, I have no fucking need to be announced!”

His eyes drank in the tableau by the bed—his wife, knelt before this Majak seated on his sheets. A savage grin peeled his lips back from his teeth.

“Or maybe I do. It seems, my lord Hanan, that I owe you a hundred elementals and a heartfelt apology. You were right, my wife is a whore after all.” Lethal good cheer lurking at the edges of Ashant’s tone now. “Oh, no, my dear, don’t get up. Don’t stop what you’re doing. You’ve just saved me the necessity of a duel to defend your honor. Isn’t that right, Hanan?”

A second figure stepped into the chamber at Ashant’s right shoulder. Same regimental colors, same campaign cloak and deceptively elegant court sword. Same telltale profession-of-violence shadow hanging over the man like a pall of charnel house smoke. Egar found himself wishing fervently he hadn’t left the Ishlinak staff lance on the temple floor at Afa’marag.

“Much though it grieve me,” Hanan said somberly. “You are correct, my lord.”

Imrana surged to her feet. Oddly, in this room suddenly crowded with men of war, she seemed the only one with any grip on what to do next.

“Saril, what is the meaning of this intrusion?” Icy and commanding in the wrap of her robe—a witch queen out of legend could not have carried it better. “How dare you storm in here, in company, without a word of civilized warning. What is this, the steppes?”

Ashant goggled at her. It lasted a good, useful moment—then the spell broke.

“Whore!” he yelled, pointing a trembling finger. “Filthy whore!”

“Oh, don’t be such a fucking prick,” Egar told him wearily, and came up off the bed with his hands full of knives.

He figured anything less would get him killed. Two Demlarashan veterans, noble-born and -bred, full of piss and righteous outrage, and the law on their side. Yhelteth jurists accorded any man, even a commoner, the right to butcher his wife on the spot if he caught her in the act of adultery. There were some legal limits on what could be done to the lover, but most magistrates were inclined to be lenient if the husband got carried away. And if that lover was Majak, and the injured party a nobleman just back from serving his Empire in uniform, well, it didn’t take a law clerk to work out how this was going to boil down…

Ashant reached for his sword and Egar went in hard, full-body blow, pinned and blocked the draw before it got started. He knocked the knight to the floor—risky move, if Ashant had been sober and better poised, he probably wouldn’t have gotten away with it. He heard the hushed rasp of steel on his flank as Hanan cleared his blade—was already whirling to face the other man. The stiffness in his wound slowed him down, and his leg buckled on the turn. Hanan misread him, sliced too high. Egar snatched the chance, let the stumble take him all the way forward and down, stabbed savagely with his right-hand knife, down through the toe of Hanan’s boot and into the floorboards beneath.

Hanan roared, ignored the pain, tried to chop him again with the sword. Egar was already rolling away, leave that knife where it is, Dragonbane. He banged into Ashant, who was trying to get up. They clawed at each other, held each other down, wrestled back and forth across the floor until Egar pulled a Majak wrestling trick, got loose and hacked, elbow to throat, once, twice, short vicious arcs, Urann’s balls wouldn’t this guy ever quit, three times then, and there, finally, Ashant fell back and lay faceup on the carpet, choking.

Get up, Dragonbane, get up—

Because Hanan, tough little motherfucker that he’d turned out to be, had meantime reached down and torn the knife up out of his foot with a bellow equal parts triumph and agony, and was now limping forward, sword and dagger style…

Egar rolled to his feet, found himself inches off Hanan’s long blade. He leapt back, just as the Yhelteth knight thrust. The blade fetched up inches short once more. He gave ground again. Hanan grinned ferociously at him, whipped the supple court sword back and forth across the air so it made a sound like shredding cloth. Came on one grim, limping step at a time.

“How now, steppe scum!” he rasped. “How now?”

Falling back, Egar had an eyeblink instant to assess—down to one knife, left-handed; he had a third blade stowed in his burglar’s garb, but it was way too late to free it. He was going to get cut up badly on Hanan’s court sword, getting in close enough to kill the man, but—

From the floor, Brinag—blood matted in his hair, streaming down his face from where Ashant had kicked him—grabbed desperately at the knight’s ankle.

Hanan stumbled, cursed, whipped about and plunged his sword point into the eunuch’s arm. Brinag groaned and hung on. Egar—the knife changing hands like sorcery, spun from palm to gripping palm without thought—seizing the moment, leaping in…

Hanan caught the move in the corner of his eye, swung about, court sword rising clumsily back to guard, and thrust. Egar ducked and hooked with his free arm, the blade went over his shoulder, the hooking arm caught it at the midpoint—twist at the elbow, get that tender inner arm out of the way, lead with the bone—smashed down and stepped in. A poorer blade would have snapped, a poorer soldier would have lost his grip. But Hanan hung on and the blade bent and sliced into Egar’s forearm as the knight twisted it desperately about.

Egar yelled and stabbed—in under the sternum, full force.

Hanan shrilled like a stuck pig. You knew from that cry he was done, but Egar only lurched closer in, hugging the man like a lover. Drove the blade deeper, twisting and hacking down into the belly. Stared into the man’s eyes as he carved the life out of him.

“How now, city dweller?” he spat. “How now?”

The court sword twanged free of Hanan’s grip as he went down. Blood and viscera gushed out over Egar’s hand as he pulled the knife free.

He held Hanan’s sagging body up for a moment with his other arm. Patted the dead or dying man companionably on the shoulder a couple of times, panting, then let him fall.

Weeping into quiet.

Egar looked about vaguely, already sensing the fight was done. No more intruders, the open chamber doors yawned wide, but there was only gloom beyond. Imrana was knelt sobbing at her husband’s side, holding his head in her hands while he finished choking to death. Brinag fumbled to his feet, came and stood beside Egar, nursing the hole in his arm where Hanan had stabbed him. His face was a garish fright mask, red-streaked and smeared with the blood from his torn scalp.

“Quite the harem adventure this morning, my lord,” he said acidly.

Egar lifted and turned his own left arm, looked at the dark spreading soak of fresh blood through his sleeve where Hanan’s blade had sliced him up. He grimaced.

“Bit tight, yeah.”

From the floor, Imrana turned a hectic, tear-streaming face on him. “You killed him! Eg, he’s fucking dead, you killed him!”

He spread his arms, blood-clotted knife still clutched in his right hand. Not a lot you could say, really. Second or third blow to Ashant’s throat, he’d felt the windpipe crush inward, he already knew he’d killed him. Wished she wasn’t so visibly upset about it, though. Could have done without that.

“You’d better get out of here.” Brinag, at his shoulder. “Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to get away with dumping these two down the old well. Not this time.”

“Yeah.” Egar glanced at the eunuch. “I owe you, Brin. You going to be all right?”

“They cut off my balls at fifteen,” Brinag said tonelessly. “What else is there?”

Egar, who in his time had seen the mutilated enemies of the Dhashara hill tribes and the roasting pits of the Scaled Folk, thought this showed remarkably little imagination on Brinag’s part. But now was really not the time. He clapped the eunuch on the shoulder.

“Good man. You take care of her, then. Blame whatever you need to on me.”

Brinag looked steadily back at him, nodded.

“Eg?” Imrana, back on her feet, wiping away tears with angry swipes of her palm. “Eg, what are you talking about? What are you going to do? You can’t just…”

He sighed. “Imrana, they’re going to put your slaves to the question, they’re going to know I was here. And you told me yourself we’re pretty much an open secret in court circles. Hanan certainly knew, seems he fronted Saril with it, in front of who knows how many noble witnesses. You’ve got to hang this on me.”

She stared at him. “No.”

“Don’t be a fucking idiot, woman. It’s either that, or we conspired together to murder your husband, and you’ll go to the chair for it. Is that what you want? Look—you’d given me up, right? Fallen back in love with your husband. I broke in here furious, to rape you or whatever, that whole Majak steppe-thug thing, Hanan and Saril arrived just in time to stop me, but I killed them and fled. You’re just a victim of a noblewoman’s silly indiscretion that got out of hand. That’ll wash, right? You’ve got friends at court who’ll see it done?”

She nodded numbly. He tried to take her in his arms, but she was still rigid with the shock. He settled for running a rough thumb down her tear-ribboned cheek.

“Then that’s the way it has to be, Imrana.”

“But they’ll… they’ll hunt you down.”

He snorted. “Yeah, they’ll try. I’ve been hunted by steppe ghouls and starving wolves, Imrana. I think I can handle the Yhelteth City Guard.”

And for one crazy moment, he wished he was back out there on the steppe once more, back under that great icy sky with staff lance and ax and knives at hand, and nothing more complicated to worry about than some pack of howling hungry creatures on the horizon who’d ill-advisedly decided they wanted a piece of him.

Instead of which…

This fucking city.

He nodded once more at Brin, looked once more at Imrana standing there. Then he turned and headed back out into it.